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So far UK broadcasting group the BBC has delivered some of the most powerful VR experiences yet seen in headsets. From the fantastic underwater exploration of Life in VR to the storybook novelty of The Turning Forest, the organization has produced content that truly capitalizes on the format. Good news, then; it’s got more of that on the way.

The BBC today announced two new VR experiences set to release later this year. One, Make Noise, celebrates the centennial of the suffragette’s movement in which women campaigned to win the right to vote while the other, 1943: Berlin Blitz, does the same for the UK’s Royal Air Force (RAF).

Make Noise is a vibrant-looking piece that will employ the use of the viewer’s voice. Inspired by leading suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst’s call for people to “make more noise”, viewers will hum, sing and shout along to the experience, changing the world around them in the process. The journey will take you through various stages of the suffragette movement, narrated by actor Nikki Amuka-Bird. It features archive material from the BBC including the voices of real-life suffragettes. It’s developed by the BBC’s new VR Hub with the help of Anagram.

Berlin Blitz, meanwhile, recognizes the work of the RAF by recreating a bombing run over Berlin that was attended by BBC journalist Wynford Vaughan-Thomas on September 4th 1943. You’ll find yourself in the Lancaster bomber, the most successful heavy bomber used by the RAF in the Second World War. This piece was created by BBC Northern Ireland and Immersive VR Education and will be on display at the RAF’s International Royal Air Tattoo in Fairford from July 13th – 15th.

Look out for these experiences to release on a VR headset near you later this year.

Seeking Dawn releases in just a few days on July 12th for $39.99. In the lead up to launch, the developers at Multiverse have released 12 minutes of gameplay footage showing the first few bits of the game.

We’re playing it for review right now and will be able to show off some of it tomorrow during a livestream, but in the meantime you can check out some of it down below:

Seeking Dawn aims to deliver a campaign-focused VR FPS for the Rift and Vive. The closest comparison we can think of is probably along the lines of Farpoint. There is co-op in Seeking Dawn as well that works as a drop-in, drop-out system and you can carry your same save file between single player and multiplayer.

A PSVR release is supposedly in development as well — we’d love to play this with a PS Aim Controller, even though the dual wielding would feel a bit off.

We’ll have more thoughts to share soon. You can watch the previous launch trailer down below for more glimpses of the game:

What do you think of Seeking Dawn from what you’ve seen? Let us know down in the comments below!

The “VR hype cycle” used to explain the relatively slow rate of adoption for VR refers mostly to the consumer market, and in large part the household-targeted segment, which I believe has suffered the most thanks to the false narrativesthat I outlined last month. Most of the chips have been bet on high-fidelity immersive content and when it comes to premium experiences, your home just does not serve as the best or most natural setting to clutter up with the necessary equipment and accessories.

The more fitting place is a location-based spaces, like a VR arcade. That’s why location-based VR experiences are currently trending in popularity worldwide while household consumer adoption is not. According to Greenlight Insights, global location-based VR entertainment will in fact double to $1.2 billion this year and grow to over $8 billion by 2022.

VR arcades are the first of the form to pop up, blooming particularly early in Asia thanks to the region’s popular backdrop of internet cafe culture, which serves as the ideal foundation. Western diets have understandably taken more time adjusting to the return of an arcade model that the market thought had otherwise gone extinct some decades ago. Not only are they quite alive, the pace of adoption is picking up.

VR arcades are no fad

“There are now over 100 VR arcades in the United States and they usually follow the same format. There are even more outside the United States, with the latest estimate that there are 4000 worldwide.” says CEO Ryan Burningham of Virtualities, a VR arcade based in Salt Lake City and one of the very first to take root in the US.

When you hear about the prohibitive nature of VR-ready equipment and accessories, the most cited factor to blame for poor consumer adoption is cost. That’s why, they say, traction is lagging behind forecasts and why location-based experiences are benefiting as a sort of steward model.

Maybe cost and the alternative of renting versus buying does play some appreciable role at the moment, but I think the point is exaggerated. The underlying reason why mainstream audiences don’t yet take VR seriously enough to dish out the dollars is actually due to a particularly poor product-market fit for premium content.

The real factors at work for why location-based VR is popular is because they offer the dedicated space for room-scale experiences and the increasing array of custom-designed hardware that allows our physicality to truly feel immersed.

Physically integrated experience

In many cases, this will mean letting our bodies step outside of the usual anthropomorphic lens and, for instance, fly around as an eagle with wings above the skylines of New York City, as I was able to last month at the World VR Forum in Crans-Montana, Switzerland.

Zurich-based SOMNIACS‘ full body “Birdly” simulator required that I lay horizontal with my arms and hands strapped into mechanical wings that position, pivot, rotate and, yes, flap authentically like an eagle. My deep-seated fear of heights was triggered immediately but after a few sessions the phobia had abated. I couldn’t imagine a more apt approach to immersing my

If you’ve ever felt that your body would be a better controller in virtual reality than a joypad or wand, you’ll understand why Kaaya Tech’s HoloSuit just reached its funding goal on Kickstarter. Offered in multiple versions, the wearable haptic controller uses a considerable array of sensors to control VR apps, and promises to start shipping this November.

The most complex version of the HoloSuit, HoloSuit Pro, includes 36 total sensors, nine haptic feedback devices, and six firing buttons. They’re spread across two finger-tracking gloves, a pair of pants with feet extensions, and a jacket with a head extension. A less complex version just called HoloSuit cuts the sensor count to 26 and comes with either a jacket or jersey, preserving the haptics and buttons. Jackets, pants, and gloves can also be purchased individually for tracking of specific body parts.

Potential applications for a full body suit like HoloSuit are numerous: Kaaya shows it being used for everything from sports training to human control of robots, instructing emergency services personnel, and even simulating conditions within military vehicles. Wearing HoloSuit means that users can fully train their bodies and develop physical muscle memory during lessons, rather than wielding controllers and developing only mental memories during training.

Arguably the best part of HoloSuit is the absence of external camera tracking. Kaaya says that embedded sensors do all of the body motion capture work necessary for world-scale tracking, and provide data wirelessly through either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth LE to a VR setup using Unity or a Wi-Fi SDK. HTC Vive, Oculus, Windows Mixed Reality, and HoloLens are supported, as are Samsung Gear VR, Android, and iOS tablets and phones. Washing the suit is supposedly as easy as pulling the Velcro-connected sensor array out and tossing the garments in a washing machine.

Perhaps not surprisingly, a complete HoloSuit is eye-wateringly expensive, starting at a regular price of $999, with the HoloSuit Pro going for $1,599. Even the gloves are $249 apiece — sold individually, not as a set. But Kaaya is offering each of the items at lightly discounted “early bird” prices through the Kickstarter campaign, which will continue though the end of July despite already hitting its modest $50,000 funding goal. If you’re interested in experiencing the cutting edge of VR and willing to deal with early adopter software growing pains, the investment might be worth it.

Step into the shoes of a deadly black-ops spy in this 30-foot tall location-based VR experience. With San Diego Comic-Con International just around the corner, excitement surrounding this years crop of multi-genre entertainment and comic exhibits have once again begun to mount. As Amazon Studios prepares their usual line-up of Prime Video content, the company

Orbiting 248 miles above the Earth in the International Space Station (ISS), Astronaut Alexander Gerst is using VR to participate in a scientific study examining how the brain draws information from sources like light, sound, and especially gravity to assist hand-eye coordination. The French study bears the appropriate acronym GRASP: Gravitational References for Sensimotor Performance. It is